Thompson’s expertise at A&E contains founding its documentary manufacturing arm, A&E IndieFilms, again in 2005. Whereas there, a number of of its movies earned Emmy nominations, together with “Life, Animated,” “Cartel Land,” “Jesus Camp,” and “Murderball.”

Thompson additionally has exec produced: “The Clinton Affair,” Charles Ferguson’s “Watergate” docuseries, “Studio 54,” “Metropolis of Ghosts,” “The Imposter,” “Drunk Stoned Good Useless: The Story of the Nationwide Lampoon,” “The Unknown Identified: The Life and Occasions of Donald Rumsfeld,” “No Place on Earth,” “Cave of Forgotten Goals,” and “Being Evel” — a few of which have been below A&E’s Historical past Movies banner.

For Lifetime Movies, she exec produced two narrative options: “Lila & Eve,” which starred Viola Davis and Jennifer Lopez and premiered on the 2016 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition; plus Eleanor Coppola’s “Paris Can Wait,” with Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin.

Thompson’s hiring signifies Apple’s curiosity in bringing content material that can attraction to those that don’t recurrently watch conventional TV, however as a substitute wish to stream extra instructional fare — like documentary movies and docu-series, biographies, exhibits with a historic focus, and different non-fiction. Plus, documentaries would give Apple a approach to compete early on for Emmy consideration, even when its scripted sequence fail to realize vital reward.

Documentaries additionally characterize one other technique of competing straight with Netflix, the place the format has turn into an enormous draw for subscribers — even zeitgeist-y, at occasions. Netflix as we speak has a spread of documentaries that almost everybody has seen, or has a minimum of heard of, like “Making a Assassin,” “Wild Wild Nation,” “13th,” “Amanda Knox,” “Fyre,” “Amy,” and lots of extra. This month it’ll have one other hit on this style, with Beyoncé’s Coachella documentary, out on April 17th.